Will it ever be finished?

As the year rolls on, I sometimes find myself thinking...Will this artist-of-the-week program ever end?!  At first, I excitedly studied the blueprints.  Then I found joy in the efforts of the early foundations.  I gave myself a round of applause when I started to see the building rise above ground.  I even announced a new wing.  Yes, it continues to be a wonderful learning experience, but I just want to get through it and place a big check-mark against this item on my 2018 to-do list.

Well, even these feelings have precedents in art history -- or architectural history.  No doubt you've heard of Gaudi's famous unfinished cathedral in Barcelona --still a work-in-progress after 127 years.  And this building is just one among many famous or fabulous unfinished buildings -- check this link and, after Gaudi's Familia Sagrada, read at least about the second building on the list.  Eerie.

Still:  The hot and smoky month of August actually brought me to some cool artists, either new or only slightly familiar.  The first, Alice Neel, is someone I plan to revisit.  I *loved* her portrait "Elenka."

With this as my model, I tried to portray my young neighbour -- "Kristina."

Next, the coursework introduced artist David Cambria.  Cambria's portraits would be almost conventional if he didn't smear and blotch and half-patch them over:

 The strong features of his male models brought to mind a neighbour I occasionally chatted with before he moved away in the spring.  I'd always thought he'd be a terrific subject to paint, and one day I made a quick memory sketch of his high cheekbones and deepset eyes.

INSERT BLOG 5 - sketch of guy down the street

With this and the example of Cambria's cover-ups, I managed a fair likeness.  I call this "Palette Man" because I painted it on an old palette.

 August's third artist, Richard Diebenkorn, was well known to me for his powerful drawings in several of my drawing books:

His paintings,  I discovered, were powerful in a different way.   He used beautiful, carefully modulated colours in broad almost abstract layouts, often portraying seated women.   These recalled my own seated figures in my simple 2015 panel painting, "Not Far From SoMa"  -- my first attempt to make a painting from preliminary quick sketches.  I singled out this female figure as a Diebenkorn-type model:

-- to produce this spin-off:

 The final artist-of-the-week (previously unknown to me), was Cathy Hegman who creates often blurred and "washed" images.  It was one of her more defined figures, "Seekers", that drew my attention, particularly this detail:

In a fantastic coincidence, I'd discovered just the week before an amazing learning resource:-- Indiana University has collaborated with the famous Uffizi Gallery in Florence to create 3-D digitizations of the Gallery's sculptures and...ta tum!...they're all available on line.  Do check in and give it a try  -- just follow the cues to be able to rotate the piece in space: all the way around, and in every vertical orientation.  (If you discover how to do somersaults, please let me know).

I chose the marble bust of the goddess "Cybele" and worked from the on-line image to emulate Hegman's figure.

 Wow.  Just reliving some of these challenges I set for myself has been energizing.  I've learned a lot this month and found some exciting byways to pursue in future studies.  Hard to say whether the creators of all those unfinished buildings felt the same way, but right now I'm recalling the wisdom of the familiar mantra:  "The journey is the destination."

Taking a line for a walk

 

 The Swiss artist Paul Klee, who was also a musician, a teacher, a father, a writer, and a very witty guy, once pithily said, "A drawing is simply a line going for a walk."  Well, it happened that most of the July artists in my on-line course are as famous for their drawings as for their paintings -- and in most cases, I chose to focus on drawing even though the course lessons usually opted for paint.

One exception for me, though, was Toulouse-Lautrec.  His drawings are magnificent with oh, such sensitive use of line.  But as I idled through my books, I lingered on his familiar painting "At the Moulin Rouge," thinking the upturned face would make an interesting exercise.  And what was the good of that upturned face without the almost fluorescent green?

 And as for the dance hall -- well, what about the flamenco dancers I sketched at the Dance Centre last November? Here's the outcome:  "Flamenco Rosario at the Moulin Rouge."

 

Next up was Käthe Kollwitz, a lesser known artist greatly revered by those who love drawing -- and by people who are touched by her personal history and commitment to the disadvantaged and oppressed whose sorrows and struggles are reflected in her art.  I discovered Kollwitz when I took my first life drawing courses in my late 20s.  I was so struck then by the unflinching honesty of her self-portraits, made from her own 20s into her 70s -- and here I am now, toward the end of that range myself, with my admiration more than intact.

It was difficult for me to imagine trying to copy a Kollwitz drawing -- her themes sometimes are too terrible in their power -- so I sought out one of  her early self-portraits:

 -- and tried for a copy, in a slightly different medium:

The next week's artist was in quite a different vein -- Marc Chagall, whose paintings almost always seem to convey tenderness and love.   I was momentarily tempted to try to copy "The Birthday", with my friends L and B floating through the air, two Schipperke dogs at their heels.  But reason prevailed, and I chose an atypical Chagall as a better model for my continuing efforts to draw the face.   His "Self-Portrait in Pencil" is odd but compelling:

  My version is based on the memory of a long-ago college friend, "Sandra."

Someone who really knew how to let a line loose on a walk was the next week's artist, Egon Schiele.  If you know drawing, you know Schiele.  If you don't and plan to go browsing the internet, be prepared to blush -- he ran into censorship problems in his day, along with his mentor Gustav Klimt.  Schiele's painting (or coloured drawing?) titled "Donna Seduta," is Essence-of-Schiele:

 I recalled that I'd made a drawing at the drawing studio that comes rather close to his pose:

I then wandered a bit far from Schiele terrain as I saw the opportunity to do a study for a painting I've had in mind.   I'm enthralled when I catch a glimpse of the young woman across the street coming or going in her fantastic costumes -- it turns out she's a children's entertainer.

Watch this spot.  She'll be back some day in my repertoire.

July had five weeks, and the fifth artist-of-the-week was Giacometti.  You've no doubt seen examples of the wiry, knobby sculptures for which he's famous.  But again, I chose to search out an example that would keep my desired focus on the portrait.  Here's his drawing "Bust of Annette."

 -- and my spin-off, "Girl on the Bus."  Maybe another day in another way, I'll try to capture her fantastic haircut -- absolutely shorn brush-cut style on one side of her head, with wild flowing hair on the other side.

It was a month focused on drawing and reminding me again of how much I love my pencils, and my pens, and my markers, and my charcoal, and my brush-cut brushes clipped short for making real lines, and the huge rush and intensity of making marks on paper.

Michelangelo, that dynamo, said it all: 

"Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure."

Well, HE had "the power of drawing."   And for us wannabes, there's encouragement in his words that reveal that even he felt there was so much farther to go.

 "Lord, grant they I may always desire more than I accomplish."